From the Little Village: "I sat down on behalf of Little Village to catch up with Marilynne Robinson in her office at the Iowa’s Writers’ Workshop, in advance of her upcoming talk at the Englert Theater on Wednesday, Oct. 24. The acclaimed novelist, essayist and professor has received more awards, fellowships and prestigious visiting lectureships than can be tallied here, including a Pulitzer Prize and an Orange Prize for her fiction. She is the author of the award-winning novels Housekeeping, Gilead and Home, and of several best-selling collections of essays. Her most recent work of non-fiction, When I Was a Child I Read Books, was published by Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux earlier this year."
Marilynne Robinson, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and faculty member in the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, will join UI Nonfiction Writing Program alumna Eula Biss for a literary benefit at 7 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 24, in the Englert Theatre in downtown Iowa City.
Admission to the reading, part of the Englert Theatre’s Centennial Celebration, is $10; tickets are available online through Midwestix.com or from noon to 6 p.m., Monday-Friday, at the Englert box office, 221 E. Washington St. All proceeds will directly benefit the Englert.
Robinson is the author of the novels Housekeeping, Gilead (which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005), and Home, and the nonfiction works When I Was a Child I Read Books, Absence of Mind, The Death of Adam, and Mother Country. Housekeeping was included in the New York Times Books of the Century and listed as one of the 100 greatest novels of all time by the UK Guardian Observer. In 1997 she received a Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts.
Eula Biss is the author of two nonfiction books, The Balloonists and Notes From No Man’s Land. The second book received the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism. Her work has also been recognized by a Pushcart Prize, a Jaffe Writers’ Award, and a 21st Century Award from the Chicago Public Library. She holds an M.F.A. in nonfiction writing from the UI and currently teaches writing at Northwestern University.